06 March 2012

Are Media Apologists Good for Climate Science?

[UPDATE 3/7: In a move rather ironic given this post, Michael Mann writes on his Facebook page that I have "teamed up" with Marc Morano to produce a "dishonest smear." How have I "teamed up" with Morano? Apparently Morano linked to this post. Mann appears challenged with the truth.

Also, on Twitter (gotta follow lots of media these days) Mann suggests that his advocacy for the Hockey Stick was in one part of the IPCC report not another. My reply -- So what? The Gillis NYT article mentioned and linked to the entire IPCC report. In how many places was the Hockey Stick featured in the 2001 IPCC report? At least in 6 places (PDF).]

Yesterday, Michael Lemonick asked of journalists at Climate Central, "should we tell the whole truth about climate change?" His answer is to ask "So where’s the right balance between telling the whole truth and being truthful in an effective way?" (have a look at the link title as well). For some journalists a desire for "effectiveness" trumps "truth."

Journalists, like everyone else, have their biases and perspectives. And on the issue of climate change journalists are as prone as any of us to the seductive siren of tribalism, with good guys on one side and evil ones on the other. But does this framing actually serve the interests of the broader climate science community? I think not.

Gillis writes of the so-called "hockey stick" graph produced by Mann and highlighted by the IPCC in its 2001 report (emphasis added):

The graph
of reconstructed temperatures is called a hockey stick because the
right-hand side shows temperatures veering sharply upward in the last
century. The paper and its graph, along with subsequent studies by Dr.
Mann and several other scientists, suggest that this recent warming is
anomalous, at least over the past millennium. Through no choice of Dr.
Mann’s, the graph became a symbol of modern climate science when it was
featured prominently in a 2001 report by a United Nations panel.

Now you don't have to be a climate insider to know that Mann was in fact actively involved in promoting his own graph to be featured by the IPCC in its 2001 report. and that Gillis' statement is flat out wrong. You don't have to believe me (or Steve McIntyre, who Gillis denigrates but does not cite by name), but Mann himself. Mann was unequivocally a vigorous advocate within the IPCC promoting his own work. When the NYT gets such a basic fact wrong it not only makes them look bad, but has collateral damage for the climate science community.

The realities of the most intensely contested aspects of the climate debate are that there are human beings on both sides -- complex, contradictory, red-blooded, imperfect human beings. When the media places scientists up on a pedestal and does so via the spinning of untruths, they simply set the stage for a bigger fall when the scientists cannot live up to their adulatory press coverage. And besides, many of us know better. The media should cover science in three dimensions, and eschew the two-dimensional fiction of good vs. evil, even if that means exploring nuance and contradiction.